Dance, Count Your Blessings, and Be as Happy as You Can
by Debra Ross
I didn't PLAN to get my 13-year-old a cello for Christmas. Madison only just started playing the cello in November. And she didn't actually need a cello; she was using my perfectly good cello, named Hiawatha, which my parents bought when I was 13 from Mr. Perlmutter, who owned the corner ice cream store in my home town of Cranford, NJ.
But about 10 days before Christmas last year, Madison's cello teacher, Elizabeth Kinney, told me that she knew of a cello in need of a home. Elizabeth said that it was a matter of some urgency for its owner, Jean Vincent-Rapp, who was 92 and ill.
So I investigated at the store where the cello was being sold. It was full of dings and scratches and wonderful character, not like some of those shiny new factory cellos that were going for four times the price. The shiny ones were more popular, the store owner said. He'd been trying to sell this for Jean on consignment for months, and it kept being passed over. But I knew immediately that I'd found Madison's cello...or, rather, that it had found us.
I visited with Jean at her home a day later. I saw immediately that she was engaged, spirited, and not very casual, someone who cared about the deeper meanings of things. Someone, that is, like the adult that Madison is becoming. And I found out what I was buying wasn't just any old cello, but a cello with a story. Jean had bought the instrument in 1952 through an ad in the newspaper when her friend across the street joined an orchestra. The cello was being sold by a serviceman who had served overseas in World War II. Jean had played cello since she was a child, but this was the first one she had owned. She then played it for 40 years with the Brighton Symphony. 
If you’ve sat with someone very ill, you likely know the futility I felt sitting with Jean: You know there is not much you can do, but you want to do something. I had brought a photo and a letter about Madison to leave with Jean, and I told her all about her cello's new owner. We listened together to a piece Madison and I like, Mark O'Connor's Appalachia Waltz.
I sensed it made Jean happy to be thus connected with the future, even though she wouldn't be there to share it: The instrument that had brought her so much joy was about to bring another lifetime of inspiration to someone worthy of it. She told me how much it meant to her that I'd taken the time to talk. But really, the value was to me, for getting to spend a few quiet hours with Jean in the midst of the holiday commotion. Madison and I are now connected with the past in a way we hadn't been before.
And someday, maybe, some other worthy young musician will inherit the cello with a story. It will still be the serviceman's story and Jean's story, but also Madison's story. And, knowing Madison, there will more dents and marks to help tell the tale.
Jean died just a week into the new year, so she never got to see Madison in person. Madison and I were privileged to attend her memorial service, and there I found out that my first impression of Jean was accurate: This was, indeed, someone worth knowing, even if for only two hours, even if only through the words and stuff she has left behind. She wrote the poem "Cancer Capers" last year after she was diagnosed with terminal cancer. Her granddaughter Kristen Larkin read it at the service, and I have reprinted it here with Kristen's permission.
Clearly, Jean Vincent-Rapp understood the power of writing your own story, and as you can see, it's the right one, a message that Madison will hear in her own music every time she picks up her cello: Dance, count your blessings, and be as happy as you can.
© 2013, Debra Ross
Debra Ross is publisher of KidsOutAndAbout.com.